


Mienharel'len

by snarkengaged



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-09-06 23:47:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16842874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snarkengaged/pseuds/snarkengaged
Summary: Just a place for me to put any short works written about my worldstate! Shorts about: Tikvah "Thrice-Stray" Mahari-El; Ofira Hawke; Tzofia (Mirele) Lavellan; Calenhad Adaar; and Asher Len'nan. Mostly just so I'll be able to figure out what goes where, honestly.





	1. Mirele: In the Fade

Mirele swung her staff hard, and tried to ignore the voice that was in her head.

_All that searching was for naught, for a dead_ _Warden who should’ve been there in your incompetent stead._

She was nearly out of breath. They had been fighting demons for so long, she needed a respite. She huffed, and brushed the ash off her clothes. 

_She is dead-Tikvah Thrice-Stray is dead in a desert, hundreds of miles from home, and you wasted years of your life looking for a ghost._

Cassandra put a hand on her shoulder, suddenly. Mirele looked up to the knowing, sympathetic gaze of the woman she loved. Mirele’s cheeks coloured when she realized that her companions must be hearing it, too.

_Your friends fear your power, so I will be the one to tell you the truth, to name you. I call you ‘Usurper’._

Mirele avoided Loghain’s gaze, and fadestepped to the next demon. Her lungs were burning. So were her eyes.

_What would little Amira say, if she could see you now?_

She shut down, fell back to rote spellcasting.

_Little sister left to lead a clan, little sister who wasn’t capable enough to even hold a staff, little sister who hates you._

Four, five, six, **turn** -take a breath, **keep breathing** -

_You said you didn’t want the power, she thinks, as she tries to figure out this month’s measly food supplies. But that’s not true, is it? You wanted the most power you could find. That is why you left your clan to fend for themselves, with a decrepit old woman and a terrified, scatterbrained fool all that protects them, within sight of Tevinter’s hungry border._

The final demon fell under Mirele’s onslaught of cold fury and arcing lightning. She sat, suddenly, her legs giving out. Cole hovered. He couldn’t get in while the Nightmare was talking. That was fine. Mirele didn’t think she wanted anyone in her head, ever again.

_Traitor for power, usurper of Elvhen hope! I curse you to your fate-you would steal it all? You will be all that is left, selfish Tzofia._

Hearing her name-the true one, the one no one can know here, for they would swallow her whole-the panic coursed through her like-

Tzofia stilled, exhaled. The long stretch of a single moment. Mirele inhaled, and began to think of a trickle of water. Re'ut had helped her find it long ago. She just needed to get deep enough beneath it-

Her fears were large, words as high as the sky, insurmountable, walls that surrounded her-

but there it was. The trickle of water. She watched it slide between the letters, slowly meander and pick up sudden speed, all on it’s own, in it’s own time-

she stood up.

Solas watched her, his feelings more close to the surface than usual. Perhaps it was the Fade, perhaps not. He murmured something questioning, drawing close. 

Mirele shook her head, but did not forgo his hand sliding into her own. She breathed, and looked at Ofira Hawke, keeping a respectful distance with her arms crossed. 

“Let’s put an end to this. I find this demon’s voice grows grating.”


	2. Mirele: After everything

After the mess with the Eluvians and the disbandment of the Inquisition, Cassandra had expected things might return to the calm of before-or at least some shade of it. She knew the hunt for Solas had now become a broader fight, the kind Leliana called “an operation” with “agents”. Ugh.

But Mirele-her miraculous Mirele, as her mortalitasi uncle had insisted on calling her, to Mirele’s sincere laughter and Cassandra’s hesitant smile-her life should have gotten calmer. But that was before Sera and her band of ridiculous…well. That was before Sera got involved. And that was an entirely new and separate headache all its own. If the stories Sera told Cassandra were true-of scrambling runs across loosely shingled rooftops in the dark of night, turning to fire a bolt at pursuing guards and hoping the step you looked away wasn’t where the roof ended-

Cassandra just hated it. She was glad to know her love hadn’t lost-herself, after finding Solas again. But-

Well. She talked to Dagna (who knew Mirele better than her, after all), and some measurements were taken, of Mirele’s arm-where her arm used to be.

Cassandra wondered if being a good wife made her, by necessity, an accomplice. She dimly hoped not. 

Sera was a menace. 


	3. Mirele: At the breaking

Mirele couldn’t feel her legs. “There isn’t anything worth killing so many people for, Solas. I cannot absolve your guilt, because you know what you plan is wrong. That we are real. And we have lives and emotions and experiences that you have claimed to treasure-but you are willing to endanger us all to return to a time that many of us could not survive. You deceived us all again. Congratulations.”

Solas’ hand remained gentle upon her cheek. She did not know if she wanted to knock it off and spit in his face, or lean into it and fall asleep, to wake and find it had all been a nightmare. Nothing seemed real.“You would survive, vhenan.” 

“Would I wish to? Give me an honest answer for once, Dread Wolf.” He was silent. “Did slumber help silence the dead?”

Solas sat back on his feet, his fingers trailing down to her arm and resting. A strange bleak weariness seemed to shift and come to the forefront of him. Mirele wondered how long it had been there and she hadn’t seen it. “If you will not see the brutal reason behind my duty-if you cannot sympathize with why I would do such a thing despite my own trepidation-”

“You have yet to give me a reason compelling enough for me to endorse putting a world at risk because you miss what it used to be! The past is not reason to damn the future, Solas. You cannot know that it will all slide back into place and return the world to what you remember, even aside from the probable death of all I know!” 

The fight went out of her. She was so, so exhausted. Her hand was in agony and so was everything else. Whatever happened, she just wished it was done. But it couldn’t be. Because even if she was dropping the mantle of the Inquisitor, she couldn’t let it end on anyone else’s terms. In her head, for the first time since she was a child, she cursed the Dread Wolf. 

He didn’t seem to notice. “Will you at least answer me this: what will you do with the time you have, vhenan?”

It was difficult for Tzof to concentrate. “Do you mean my limited time personally, or my world’s?” She saw him go still, stricken, for just an instant. _Good_. She spit out the taste in her mouth, and prayed it wasn’t copper. That probably wasn't good, that she couldn't tell. She didn’t know who to direct that prayer too, yet, but out of habit she still said the old names. “I will live. I survived one would-be g’d and stopped a populace who tried to entomb me as another. They seem to be cropping up everywhere these days, deities.” She knew her forced grin must look more like a grimace. Her breathing wasn't-it seemed to be failing. How troublesome.

He stared at her, looking more horrified than she thought she deserved. She wasn't a world. 

Tzofia wondered-not Mirele, Mirele would be gone soon, she thought. Tzofia would wander in dreams. She wondered if she'd see him if he succeeded. She couldn't let him, even as she wasn't sure how she'd get out of this-thing with her hand. She knew she couldn't let Solas do these terrible things. 

As she watched him, her eyes struggling to stay open, she distantly thought, Ah. His heart is breaking. Good on him for catching up. 


End file.
